Restaurants · Hotels · Tourism
The Gulf Coast hospitality economy
Nearly 70,000 jobs across the corridor — and the industry AEF's first forum puts on stage.
69,680
Hospitality jobs — 4-county corridor
22,027
Harrison Co. (Biloxi/Gulfport)
17,408
Escambia Co. (Pensacola)
15,918
Mobile Co.
Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages — 2024 annual averages, private employment.
01
The corridor's front porch
Add up the four counties AEF's record covers — Mobile, Baldwin, Escambia (FL), and Harrison (MS) — and hospitality employs 69,680 people. It's the region's most visible industry and its most misunderstood: high revenue, brutal margins, seasonal exposure, and a labor market that resets every spring.
02
On stage in August
The August Forum's first conversation is a hospitality conversation: Christopher Andrews of Bienville Bites Food Tour, on building a food-and-tourism business in downtown Mobile — unscripted, filmed, and finished off the record. Two of AEF's featured voices, William Hanes (Provision, Fairhope) and chef Garrick Ogburn (Mobile), run hospitality businesses of their own.
03
What the record asks
The questions worth documenting aren't the review-site ones. They're operator questions: what a beach season actually costs to staff, what downtown foot traffic converts to, which concepts survive their third year and why. That's the layer AEF's room is built to surface.